Five Experiments in Balanced Living

by Swami Vijay (Lawrence Vijay Girard)

Wholesome, natural, chemical free, the way nature intended, these are terms we use to embrace nature in its most pure form. We can imagine an organic farm where every fruit and vegetable is vital with life force and bursting with nutrients. Along with rows of fresh produce we might add happy, smiling gardeners who relish working in the soil and bringing the best quality foods to market. The sun is shining, flowers are blooming, life is good.

We can all imagine living in a world where everything is always pleasant and in perfect harmony. But as a practical matter we realize that nature isn’t just rainbows, it is also bugs, drought and tornadoes! The world we live in maintains its balance with opposites: light and dark, pleasure and pain, bounty and famine. As expressions of nature we must also seek balance in our own lives so that our successes don’t end in pain and our challenges won’t keep us from happiness.

The big question is: Is there a center point at which we can experience personal balance and well-being? Or will we always be tossed around by life like a rudderless ship at sea?

In spite of the fact that there are few people who haven’t experienced various levels of unhappiness in their lives, the truth is that there is a place of equilibrium within each of us that is so dynamically positive that it is in essence immune to the ups and downs of life. This inward wellspring is always filled with the light, love, peace and joy that we instinctively yearn for but find so often to be just out of reach.

So why aren’t we aware of this inner paradise? Because we have become accustomed to living with the outward personality as our center instead of living with our true inner Self as our center. Within each of us is an access point to our highest universal potential that includes everything we need for happiness and success in life. Unfortunately most of us haven’t been trained in how to utilize this inner potential.

Here are 5 Experiments for accessing some of your inner potential and balancing your life.

1. Live Consciously

Be more deeply aware of what is going on in your life by consciously connecting to your inner Self.

Experiment: Take a mental inventory of how you feel right now. Just close your eyes and observe your level of calmness or agitation. Now try this breathing exercise. Exhale fully through your mouth and then inhale deeply through your nose. Hold the breath for three counts and then exhale fully through the mouth. Repeat this one more time. Now again take a mental inventory of how you feel.

If you did this experiment you most likely feel calmer and more centered. You had taken many breaths before the experiment with no particular effect. But when you consciously took just two breaths suddenly everything changed: You were more calm and Self aware.

Practice living consciously and you will discover many things in life that were always there but you had never noticed.

2. Silence is Golden

We live in a world that promotes stimulation. This stimulation creates static in the mind so that we can’t perceive our nature as peace.

Experiment: Spend a hour or more being consciously silent. Don’t speak and don’t listen to music or watch television. Leave the telephone and all other mental stimulants behind. You can walk in nature, sit quietly on the back porch, or best of all, practice deep silent meditation.

You will find that time spent in conscious silence will help you to calm the mind and allow you to experience more of your higher Self’s natural peace.

3. Work as Service

Most people work for a wage. They do a job so they will get paid. This attitude of thinking what we will get out of life instead of being more focused on giving causes us to disconnect from personal well-being.

Experiment: Spend a day consciously seeing everything you do as a joyful service. It doesn’t matter what you do, even if you do it alone, see your activity as being done joyfully to help others. If your mind wanders to self interest or any other negative thought, gently swing it back toward positive giving.

When we practice living life as joyful service, we will experience the expansive joy of giving instead of the contractive loneliness of selfishness. When it comes to happiness, a positive attitude is essential.

4. To be Joyful: Share Joy

We have all been trained to be happy when life goes that way we prefer and to be sad when it goes against our wishes. Thus we spend a lot of time waiting for something that we would describe as good to happen. Why should we waste so much time and let life control our happiness? Let’s just determine to be happy no matter what happens!

Experiment: Practice consciously being connected to a feeling of positive wellbeing and share that feeling with others. I don’t mean you should go around telling jokes all the time. Or that others should even realize what you are doing. What we want to do is inwardly connect to our center of calm, joyful, loving wellbeing and then let that flow through us to everyone and every situation that comes our way.

If we practice being a channel for positive feelings to flow out into the world, those positive feelings will be what we ourselves experience. This is the root meaning of the saying: Good is its own reward. When we live with good energies flowing through our lives we are rewarded with good feelings no matter what happens.

5. Life is your Friend

It is said that we enter into this world alone and that we will leave it alone. Thus people live with the consciousness: It is me against the world! All too often we don’t consider that there is an alternative perspective. We need to open ourselves up to the idea that life is not our enemy to be conquered, but our friend.

Experiment: Imagine that the power of life that animates all of the creation is your friend. Begin to have an inner conversation with this invisible friend. Ask questions and then observe how life responds to your thoughts. It is essential that we do this consciously and that we spend time not just talking, but listening and watching for a universal response.

The key to relationships is that they be two way and that you spend time cultivating the relationship. When we spend time making friends with life itself we will discover that we are never alone unless we choose to be so. Sometimes friends play pranks on us and we feel uncomfortable for a while, but that doesn’t mean they don’t love us! When life looks to you like a bad joke, laugh anyway! When the universe finds that we take everything with good humor we will discover that the road ahead becomes smooth.

The thing about a scientific approach to life is that you can’t say something doesn’t work if you don’t try it. So give these ideas a fair chance to work by giving them your full attention. Have fun with these experiments, and if you feel to, let us know what happens!

Copyright 2012 Lawrence Vijay Girard